Google Analytics User Research Methods to Boost Website Traffic.
If you have Google Analytics installed on your website, you have a very powerful tool to investigate your website traffic by users.
In this article, you’ll learn a few tips and tricks for using Google Analytics for user research. The results of this research will help you better understand your audience so that you can create content on your site with what your visitors are most likely to be interested in.
Table of contents
How To Navigate to Google Analytics User Research
Visit Google Analytics and sign in with your Google account. Visit the web property that you have registered with Google Analytics.
In the left navigation pane, expand the Audience section. This menu contains all the user research sections that we will cover in this guide. When you select “Overview” in this section, you will see a basic overview of your user traffic.
This view allows you to add “segments” to compare audiences. We will return to adding segments in the last section of this article.
If you scroll down to the bottom of this page, you will see a list of demographics on the left that you can choose from. Once you select them, you’ll see a ranking on the right, showing the demographic breakdown of your site’s visitors.
This demographic information includes language, country, city, browser, operating system, service provider, operating system, service provider, and screen resolution.
Exploring User Demographics
If you want to learn more about specific user demographics as part of User Research, scroll down the Audience menu, expand Demographics, and select Explore.
On this page, you will see a basic visual overview of the main demographics – age and gender.
In the Demographics section, you can select Age to see a breakdown of the number of your visitors in specific age ranges.
This can be very helpful to see if your website is liked by a younger, middle or older audience. The chart also shows how these trends have changed over time.
You can also see a similar breakdown of males and females visiting your site by selecting “Gender” in the “Demographics” section.
How to use basic demographics. By knowing the age and gender that make up the largest segment of your visitor base, you can better tailor your content to reach the widest possible audience. It will also help you identify large areas where you might need to expand your audience.
In addition to basic demographics, other sections in the Audience section of Google Analytics allow you to get more detailed information about your visitors.
Exploring Your Visitor Interests
The next section called “Audience” titled “Interest” gives you access to an amazing array of information about your visitors.
Thanks to cookies that are collected on the computers and mobile devices your visitors use, Google has a lot of details about their interests. This information about your visitors is available in your Google Analytics account under Interests.
If you select ‘Browse’, you can see all of your visitors’ interests sorted by interest type. These types are organized as follows:
Interest Category (Scope): Topics that users are more likely to be interested in.In-Market Segment: Products and services that your visitors typically explore or purchase. Other category: A slightly more general idea of ​​what your visitors are interested in.
You can drill down into these interest categories by selecting them from the Interests section in Google Analytics. Select Interest Categories to see how many users have visited your site with those interests.
Again select Market Segments to see how many users have visited your site who have explored or purchased certain products or product types.
Select More Categories to see how many users have visited your site with a broader set of interests.
How to Use Interests: Knowing the interests of your visitors is one of the most powerful ways to focus your website content on topics that will be of most interest to your readers. Affinity categories are the best place to start if you’re blogging or producing articles, but in-interest segments can be a better place if you’re selling products on your website.
Your Visitors’ Geography
If you think it doesn’t matter where your visitors come from, think again. The Internet is global, and if you can reach an audience outside of the United States, you can reach a much larger audience.
There are several ways to analyze the influence of culture on the structure of your audience. To see where your site is today, select “Geo” in the “Audience” section. Select Language from this menu.
This will show you the main languages ​​your visitors speak. This largely depends on the country of origin as well as other factors collected by Google.
However, to see the countries your visitors are from, select Location.
At the top of the Location page, you’ll see a global heatmap showing the number of your visitors. Dark blue means more visitors, light blue means fewer visitors, and no color means no visitors from those countries.
Scroll down the page to see an up-to-date list of countries, as well as the number of visits by these visitors over the selected time period.
How to use Location: The main audience is usually English-speaking Americans. However, you can increase your audience from other countries by including mentions of topics that people in other countries care about. For example, you can specify how access to certain services or products can be restricted. Or give visitors tips on how to use a VPN to overcome geo-restrictions online.
Your Visitors’ Technology
If you want your visitors to get the most out of your site, you need to adapt your site design to the technologies most of your visitors use.
Google Analytics gives you a great insight into this technology. From the “Audience” menu, select “Technologies” to see this. In this menu, you will see two options. Select Browser & OS to see the web browser and operating systems most of your visitors use.
In this section, you will notice that the Browser tab is selected first and the number of visits you received from visitors using specific browsers.
Select the Operating System tab to see a list of the most common operating systems your visitors use.
You’ll notice that there are other tabs at the top that allow you to learn more about your visitors’ technologies.
Screen resolutionScreen colors (bit depth)Flash versionJava support (under “Other”)
If you select the Mobile Devices menu in Google Analytics, you can also see which mobile devices your visitors use most when they visit the site from their phone or tablet.
How to Use the Technology: Knowing the browser, operating system, or mobile device most of your visitors use is a powerful way to make sure your site works well for the majority of those visitors. You can use this information to test your site with the most common technologies your visitors use.
Other Useful User Research Metrics
The Audience section of Google Analytics has several other sections for other metrics that can give you a better idea of ​​your audience.
If you select Users Flow, you will see an impressive image showing how different groups of users move around your site. Select a country from the dropdown and you’ll see users from the US, UK, and other countries clicking on your site’s pages.
You can also see this visual by selecting other demographics such as browser, language, etc.
Select “Overview” from the “Audience” menu and then select “Add Segment” at the top to include any additional demographics you want to compare against.
For example, you might want to see the proportion of college-age visitors compared to the total number of visitors. If you include student age as a new segment, the visual at the top of the page will show the second row so you can see this comparison.
You can add additional segments to this view to compare additional demographics in your audience.
Doing Google Analytics User Research
As you can see, Google Analytics is a very powerful tool for researching your website visitors. This insight can help you tailor your content and even your website design to appeal to a much wider audience. It can also help you make sure your site looks perfect for the majority of the visitors who visit your site the most.
Google Analytics User Research Methods to Boost Website Traffic
Google Analytics User Research Methods to Boost Website Traffic